The Animation Boot Camp 2017 ASEAN was held for three days in 2017 from December 1 to 3 at Silpakorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. This program is a part of the Agency for Cultural Affairs Program for Dispatching Experts of Pop-culture to ASEAN Countries in which animation professionals from Japan teach animating basics to students of ASEAN nations. For three years in a row, Tokyo University of the Arts has organized this workshop with Silpakorn University, a partner institution of Tokyo Geidai’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and also Tokyo Geidai’s collaborator in the Inter-University Exchange Program designated by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

25 students from multiple departments of Silpakorn University and King Mongkut’s University of Technology attended the workshop and were divided into six teams. Six members from the Department of Animation at Tokyo Geidai’s Graduate School of Film and New Media joined in each of the groups and collaborated with the Thai students to create a short animation sequence assigned by the instructors. Each member was to animate one scene of the sequence which meant he/she must communicate with the group in detail to make sure the story and characters remained consistent and the scenes connected with each other seamlessly.

The aim of the Animation Boot Camp is not to promote the Japanese style of animation or animating. It focuses on the importance of observation and feeling with one’s own body as the starting point of the animation process. The students are encouraged throughout the program to act out their scenes with their own bodies to understand how the human anatomy actually works and how strongly physical movement is related to emotion, even more so than facial expressions.

Many of the participants gave high reviews in the survey conducted at the end of the workshop, including comments such as “I realized for the first time movements that I had never been aware of before,” “I gained a lot of knowledge that would definitely help me in my own 2D animation projects,” and “I wished the workshop was longer. There is so much more I wanted to learn!”